The Western
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KID BLUE (Dir. James Frawley, Dennis Hopper, 1973, US)
* * * A forgotten Western from the early 70s but an altogether brilliantly funny one with Dennis Hopper in fine form as Texas train robber and proletarian semi-Marxist desperado Kid Blue who decides to go straight in a small town in Texas. A comedy Western with a latent counterculture dimension, Kid Blue’s attempts to Continue reading
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DOC (1971, Dir. Frank Perry, US)
The legend of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday is inexhaustible, having given birth to numerous cinematic incantations, which have all in their own way brought something distinctive to the Western narrative. Frank Perry’s Doc, made in 1971 just as the term revisionist was about to take hold of the genre and begin in earnest the Continue reading
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SHOLAY / EMBERS / FLAMES OF THE SUN (Ramesh Sippy, 1975, India) – Mastering the ‘cut’
Animalistic may seem hyperbolic trying best to describe the raw essence of Sholay but the term animalistic makes sense when you recognise Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan), the villain of the film, behaves in totality like a beastly allegory of nightmarish anxieties. Sholay is many things: a bandit film, an epic melodrama, an Indian western, the Continue reading
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